So called pallet boxes are used within a number of areas for storing small goods or mass articles of different kinds. One field of use is to be found in manufacturing industries, where various components are stored in pallet boxes either after having been produced in the industry in question or before mounting as integrated units in larger products. In everyday consumer goods retail trade, pallet boxes are used for storing sales objects in an exposed state. In this case, the customer may, after removal of a covering lid, pick the objects directly from the box, meaning that the staff of the sales company does not need to spend costly time to put up the objects on special shelves or racks.
Irrespective of the field of use, pallet boxes are in many respects advantageous as containers for storing mass articles. An advantage is that they are of a good volume (in practice within the range of 1/2-2 m.sup.3) which admits the storing of large quantities of goods. Another advantage is that they may be lifted and transported by means of motor-driven fork trucks as well as manually driven pallet lifters of a more simple nature. However, a disadvantage of known pallet boxes is that the goods-supporting bottom plate of the box is fixed or immovably connected to the wall shell. This implies that the level of the goods--from lying in flush with the top opening of the box in the initially filled box--sinks as the goods is consumed and the box emptied. Since the wall shell has a considerable height--usually about 1 m--increasing difficulties to reach the individual objects occur successively. In consumer goods retail trade, the result of this will be that the sales frequency is radically deteriorated so as to go towards nought before the box is completely emptied. Therefore, to maintain good sales, the box has to be filled with more goods or, alternatively, the semi-emptied box in its entirety is to be replaced by a filled box. When pallet boxes are used in the manufacturing industry for storing part components which are to be mounted by an operator, the sinking level of goods implies that the operator is forced to bend, in an ergonomically inappropriate way, deeper and deeper down over the walls of the box to reach down to the components.
The problem with deteriorated sales as a consequence of a sinking level of goods in storing boxes has been observed in NO 24335, which discloses a box of the kind initially generally referred to, more precisely in the form of a smaller metal box for storing and simultaneously exposing such small food articles as cookies, biscuits, sweets and the like. In order to solve the problem, this box is equipped with a goods-supporting metal sheet which can be manually lifted up to higher and higher levels relative to the surrounding wall shell as the contents of the box is consumed. The lifting is done by means of two metal lugs protruding through elongate holes in opposite walls in the wall shell and which lugs have projections by means of which the supporting sheet may be locked in a desired level of position in relation to the wall shell.
The solution of the problem known through NO 24335 may perhaps be realized for those boxes having a limited volume and which accordingly may take up goods the total weight of which is moderate. However, the solution of the problem is not applicable to pallet boxes, the volume of which may attain 1 m.sup.3 or more and which may contain goods having a total weight of many hundreds of kilos.